I’ve been reading — and correcting — a continual stream of misinformation from the left-wing media, bloggers, and gun control groups regarding the handgun and magazine used by Jared Loughner in his rampage in Tucson this past Saturday.
The firearm used by this defective young liberal was a Glock 19, using a pair of either 31- or 33-round (depending on the news source) aftermarket extended magazines.
There have been multiple claims that the handgun used was banned during the laughably labeled “assault weapons ban” that was the law of the land from 1994 until it expired in 2004.
This is entirely and unquestionably false.
There have been claims that the extended magazines were banned, and Loughner would not have had access to them had the law not expired.
This is also untrue.
While the ban meant no new standard-capacity or high-capacity magazines could be manufactured after the law went into effect, it did not make illegal the sale, purchase, possession, or use of either new or used magazines. Retailers literally had hundreds of thousands of factory-new high-capacity magazines for sale during the entire life the “ban,” and these magazines were always available in gun stores, in sporting goods catalogs, and online.
The simple fact of the matter is that the “ban” was an abject failure. It neither reduced the lethality of firearms nor did it curtail crime. If anything, the ban had only one clear effect, the impetus to create an entirely new class of sub-compact semi-automatic pistols for concealed carry applications.
And yet, the media continues to spread their fiction, unable to face the inconvenient truth that their gun control fetish doesn’t save lives.
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